Upgrading Apache httpd on RHEL and CentOS
November 24, 2006 by Jason · 62 Comments
By popular request, I've decided to write a How-To on upgrading your RHEL or CentOS 4 system from httpd 2.0.52 to 2.2.3. I'm going to issue a warning upfront though, this is NOT a simple src.rpm rebuild like the PHP upgrade how-to that I wrote. Upgrading httpd requires filling a couple dependencies, building httpd, and then rebuilding everything that depends on httpd. For most people, that means just PHP. For some sites, that may include mod_perl, mod_python, etc.
If you're using some kind of management panel like Plesk, CPanel, etc. then DO NOT follow these instructions as you will break your server. In fact, if you have a separate development environment (like an OpenVZ VPS or a separate server) then I'd suggest using that because the build process actually requires you to remove your current copy of httpd. In any case, if you're still interested, keep reading.
To complete this upgrade you're going to need 3 things. First, you'll need 'root' access to your server. Without it, even if you can build the RPMs, you won't be able to install them. Second, you're going to need to install some dependencies to meet the build requirements. Finally, you're going to need to get the src.rpm files for httpd, apr, apr-util, and pcre from FC6.
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Upgrading to PHP 5.1.6 on RHEL and CentOS
November 21, 2006 by Jason · 41 Comments
I spend a good amount of time on vBulletin sites. In fact, the company I work for owns about a dozen sites with a combined total of about 10 Million posts. One of the most common questions I hear, aside from "Can you help me optimize my server?", is "How can I upgrade to a newer version of PHP?".
While Red Hat's policy of backporting patches to provide a 5-year maintenance cycle on their OS releases certainly has its uses, it really does leave users without the benefits of using newer software versions. Newer software not only provides new features but can improve performance.
Thankfully, you don't actually need to build from scratch to upgrade an RHEL4 or CentOS4 system because srpms are available from newer versions of Fedora. If you don't know, Fedora is the test bed for future versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The remainder of this article is going to instruct you on how to rebuild the php-5.1.6 src.rpm from FC6.
There are three things you're going to need to upgrade your copy of PHP. First, you're going to need 'root' access to your server. If you don't have it, even if you can build the RPMs, you won't be able to install them. Second, on most machines, you'll need to install a huge list of dependencies. Finally, you'll need the PHP src.rpm from FC6.
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